As part of my adventures, I like grand national parks, horizon-filling national monuments, and beautiful open spaces of all kinds. These places highlight nature in all of its wide-open magnificence. Yet, I also love the smaller scale, more detailed, intimate gardens I visit. In that sense, the Classical Chinese Garden in Vancouver, Canada, surprised me […]
In this last of four posts about the Glen Canyon National Recreation Area, we see a video of another of its treasures. There are colorful, natural cliffs in the otherwise desert flatlands of America’s Southwest known as Vermilion Cliffs. They were designated a National Monument in 2000, one of our most recent and undeveloped frontiers. […]
The Rainbow Bridge was designated a National Monument in 1910. Located in the Glen Canyon National Recreation Area, you get to this giant arch two ways: by a backcountry trek of 50 miles, or by a National Park Service boat from Lake Powell’s Wahweap boat launch. I chose the latter. The Monument connects us with […]
Again visiting Glen Canyon National Recreation Area, we will be looking at the picturesque area known as Horseshoe Bend in today’s short three-minute video. Located just five miles downstream from Lake Powell, and minutes from the city of Page, Arizona, it is worth the side trip when you visit this area. When I went in […]
It’s looking and feeling like summer again. There’s no better way to beat the heat than to cool off by jumping into a giant body of water! The Glen Canyon National Recreation Area, a 1.25 million acre United States National Parks Service site on the border of Utah and Arizona, has Lake Powell. This reservoir […]
This is a quick song and video about Japan’s quick trains, the “Shinkansen.” At first, train service in Japan, (subway, local commuter routes, high-speed bullet trains,) can be daunting and confusing. I was aware of some of the humorous looks I got while pondering over the signs and directions in the station. Once I got […]
From big city hustle to forested ryokans (traditional Japanese inns,) Japan has it all. Japan is a mix of the old and the new. Though wars and earthquakes have been destructive, Japan has rebuilt itself in the styles of the past and the modern. Here, you find people living in modern housing and traveling on […]
During my recent trip to Japan, I photographed a number of castles and museums. Of the former, there were pictures of: (1) Himeji Castle, a UNESCO World Heritage site, (originally built in 1333) – the white “Egret” Castle, one of the top three castles in Japan; (2) Tokyo’s Imperial Palace – formally the site of […]
Japan is an island, (I should say “islands” much the same as the state of Hawaii is made up of several islands.) Japan is a language and a culture, (again much the same as Hawaii.) Thus, Japan has its own unique designs and architecture. In this video, I have selected a few design/architecture statements that […]
Japanese gardens can be found all over the world. They are a well-known and respected form of landscape architecture that shuns the man-made, borrows from the surrounding scenery, and features the natural materials of rock, sand, water, ocean, fish, flower, and more. Many of the gardens I visited in Japan have existed for centuries. In […]